Fictions like money and nations let strangers cooperate at scale

Hundreds of medieval villagers might never have met King Edward, yet they all obeyed his laws because they believed in his crown and banner. That banner had no weight, but it held power—binding blacksmiths, bakers and barons alike. The medieval scriptures call this phenomenon “the King’s peace,” but modern anthropology terms it an “imagined order.”

An imagined order is a shared story so powerful that it transforms mere strangers into a coherent social body. Money is another classic example. When a merchant in Venice accepts a golden ducat minted in the Byzantine Empire, he treats that bright coin as if it had the same weight, purity and value. A thousand dukats across three continents form a stable system of exchange because each person in the chain believes in the value of that shared fiction.

Scientists studying cooperation discovered that only Homo sapiens wield these mental creations. Ants are brood-year colonies—related and bound by instinct—but they couldn’t launch a Wall Street stock offering. Chimps maintain small coalitions anchored in personal bonds, but even the slickest chimp can’t found a global church. We rule the world not with bigger muscles or sharper tools, but with words and symbols.

The data supports this: societies that invented writing and complex myths grew larger and more stable than equally resource-rich neighbours. Whether it’s the slogan on a protest sign or the logo on a credit card, fictions give us the superpower of mass cooperation—so long as enough people choose to believe.

You can spark your own imagined order in minutes. Identify shared values, craft a memorable tagline, and repeat it at every meeting, group chat or coffee break—until it gains its own life. Then give everyone a simple ritual to seal the bond. Sooner than you think, even strangers will carry your tagline like a badge of honour. Try it at your next team huddle.